Hand guards on motorcycles and other off-road vehicles serve an important role to protect a user's hands from injury. Hand guards come in a variety of sizes, shapes and materials.
One form of hand guards is in the form of convex outer surface guard typically made of plastic which protects the rider's hand from wind, mud, stones, gravel and other dangerous projectiles thrown by the rear wheels of vehicles in front. Such hand guards are also useful for protecting the user's hand from brush the rider may be passing through. Hand guards may also provide protection for the hand and brake and clutch levers when the rider is involved in a crash. Since other vehicles besides motorcycles also have handlebars, such as ATVs, off-road vehicles, snowmobiles, bicycles, and other wheeled, tracked or other vehicles, hand guards are also typically found on such vehicles.
The safety concern with hand guards on handlebars is that in the case that the rider is thrown over the handlebars, the hands can become entrapped in the hand guards, which could cause severe injury, most commonly resulting in a broken wrist.
Prior art evidences a number of approaches to attempt to protect a user's hands from external injury such as rocks, trees or other objects which could strike a user's hands. However, the prior art fails to address the prospect that the user's hands are caught in the hand guard on an impact or crash. Therefore, prior art hand guards can become directly responsible for the injury of the user's hands, wrists or arms—opposite the purpose for which they are intended.
I have in fact suffered from such an impact and injury while riding a motorcycle with traditional hand guards. In fact, I broke my wrist due to my hand being caught in the traditional, non-breakaway hand guard upon a severe crash.
With that motivation, I previously created a first generation of flexible wraparound style hand guards, as evidenced by U.S. Pat. No. 9,499,225. That breakthrough hand guard served to address wraparound style hand guards, also known in the dirt biking community as “bark busters.” However, what is needed in the art is a breakaway hand guard that is not a wraparound style, but an open-ended style.